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What is so wrong about caring about one's own interests, as opposed to the interests of others? The 'elites' are the ones going out and randomly, incompetently wrecking various countries or behaving incredibly recklessly. Standing aside while others fight is sound policy. We should not get involved in other people's problems. Firstly, it's expensive and makes enemies. Secondly, we don't necessarily understand what's going on and can't necessarily fix it. Thirdly, it benefits special interests and socializes losses. Everyone is poorer due to energy shortages or debt incurred by these wars - the benefits go to military contractors, bureaucracies, favoured NGOs and PMCs.
Just consider the last 20 years of military adventurism. What did we get? A pro-Iranian (wrecked) Iraq, wrecked Libya, wrecked Syria, wrecked Afghanistan. All this came with a huge price tag and a long list of new enemies. The military establishment is not very smart, nor are they good at winning. They are very good at wrecking and lying.
This is what happens when we listen to the 'moral high ground, think of the civil society' camp. We get wrecked countries and 12-figure bills. Why should Ukraine be any different? Long, expensive conflict which doesn't improve our position at all. The realist school has warned and warned that getting involved in Ukraine was a bad idea, that it would make the Russians very angry, that they'd rather wreck the country than let it fall into our hands. They've been totally vindicated. Russia is wrecking Ukraine, missile by missile and refugee by refugee.
How hard would it be to... do nothing? If we had done nothing for the last 20 years we'd be richer, safer and stronger.
People will go on and on about how we have to stand up and support the 'international rules based order' - the biggest crock of shit. What are the rules (is there any clear law anywhere)? Who wrote them? Who agreed to them? Apparently it's OK when we invade or bomb countries, yet it's illegal for Russia to invade its neighbours? This is arbitrary nonsense.
Let's support our interests, which are not present in Ukraine. There's nothing we need in Ukraine, there's no need to get hysterical about it. Ukraine is a core Russian interest and a peripheral interest for the West as a whole. Foreign policy should distinguish between core and peripheral interests.
Ukraine is different. It is a European country that is being fast-tracked into the EU. Those who try to attack my friends, will get harshly punished.
The rules are clear. Just because someone somewhere broke them and didn't get punished is not an excuse.
What rules are clear? Can you name them or provide a link to them? None of this is in the UN Charter by the way - the Security Council decides these things.
The rule that you are not allowed to occupy other countries without a good reason.
The rule is enforced by most powerful countries on this planet, namely, NATO countries who supply Ukraine sufficient weapons so that they can fight against Russian occupying forces.
Are you truly not blind to the absurdity of your statement? ?
As George Soros said back in 2004:
I think it deserves a top-level post in itself: one of the reasons American right started to hate Soros was that he opposed interventionist policies of Bush. Now Tucker and co, who supported invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, declare people like him to be warmongers.
Yeah, sure.
Soros, whose institutes have been at the forefront of funding revolutions since.. well, probably longer than most of posters here have been alive, is for a "more humble foreign policy".
Right.
Even a stopped clock may be right once in a while.
But OK, I'll push back on a more object-level, without sneering. On forefront of which revolutions was he? Velvet revolution? Singing Revolution in Baltic countries? Orange Revolution? Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan? Euromaidan? Rose Revolution in Georgia? Because it's a nice narrative concocted by Russian propaganda, Orban and pro-Ru types, about CIA or Soros, but it just doesn't hold and betrays both ignorance and conspiratorial thinking.
I doubt he was very involved with the '89 revolutions on accounts of pervasive intelligence agency presence in those regimes.
He's given a total of 19 billion $ in grants over the past 30 years.
To quote their webpage:
(Unless, of course, it's the people who are wrong, as when they vote for AfD, Trump, or the Farmer's Party in the Netherlands.
That's money going towards funding professional activists whose values Soros likes.
What are those values ?
Free flow of capital, no borders, de-industrialization, liberation of man from all unchosen bonds, thus consequent societal atomization..
How 'great' these values work out can be seen in the UK, Germany, etc.
You forgot to include Israel in the list of baddies who don't like Soros.
A cancer can attack anyone, even bad people. That doesn't make it good. It's pretty easy to understand why people have reservations about him, for me.
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